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BY THE NUMBERS

1900+ backers, 1000+ comments. Just: WOW! It helps keep us going, knowing that so many of you want to play the game we’re working on. And that other minor detail, $70k pledged? We’re 35% of the way there. Our goal of course is 100%, but each of these 10k milestones is a good sign - so please do everything in your power to DESTROY THE SILENCE, grow our community, and help keep those good signs coming!

SHAARKARIANS FLEET VIDEO

While some races farm components and ships in space, the Shaarkarians take it a step further - they are spaceships. Their body is covered with a sectional exoskeleton, with living flesh visible through the cracks. And where many galactic inhabitants possess telepathic abilities, the Shaarkarians can tear these portals to the mind asunder, leaving them little more than helpless puppets.

There are five other fleets in the game plus hundreds of non-fleet entities and gameplay mechanics. We’re going to loop in more and different content, giving you the inside story on what to expect from Skyjacker, so keep us on your radar. Anyone want a look at some models that aren’t ready for the game engine?

WE WON’T PLEAD THE FIFTH

On the fence about Skyjacker? Have any outstanding concerns you need addressed? Know anyone who’s ever wanted a Freelancer sequel? We will be holding a live question-and-answer session at 5 PM (EST) on Monday, July 2nd, on a live broadcast.

The conference will be hosted by Joey from GamersPress and judging from their previous Q&As, we’re going to be facing some questions nobody’s asked before. If you have a question of your own and want a straight answer, send them your questions at their Tumblr.

It’s no secret that Skyjacker is based on the Abyss in Lights books written by Eugene Zhukov (aka DjekAster), and that Eugene is also the developer of the game (and the guy chatting it up in the comments :)) ). Eugene has put an extraordinary amount of cultural and technical detail into these books as informed by his degree in biology and his love of exploratory science fiction. Our first stretch goal is to get those books translated into English by professionals - fluent Russian-English translators able to evoke the depth of the characters and the legends they create.

That’s going to take time, but right now you can read an excerpt from the first book that’s been run through Google Translate and cleaned up by some guys who don’t speak ANY RUSSIAN AT ALL. Please enjoy Sand Fever, a very small part of what Eugene brings to the table. It’s about four Word pages long and requires no previous knowledge of the setting. Enjoy!

PSA #1 - HUDLESS SKYJACKER

The HUD design presented in the Skyjacker demo has had its fair share of controversy. Something the demo doesn’t make clear: you can turn it off completely just by pressing H. That’s how we’ve been recording the fleet vids, by playing a newly-constructed level with AI turned off, HUD turned off and FRAPS turned on. Backer Veav threw together some quick footage of the public Skyjacker demo sans HUD - you can watch this feature in action above, or try it for yourself by downloading the demo.

JACK AND THE STEAMSTALK

If THIS REDDIT history holds true, the giant is about to awaken - Steam’s annual Summer Sale will kick off in the next few days.
First, a humble request: please don’t spend your Kickstarter pledges! Summer Sale games will still be around in December when the Steam Holiday Sale starts, but a Kickstarted project may never happen at all without your pledge! We’re not saying to pass up a great deal - just to leave the Kickstarter piggy bank out of it.
Second, the link above gives some comprehensive and accurate insight onto how to make the sale work for you.

ONLY buy from daily sales, until the last day. Rummage around, see what catches your eye, check for related packs and collections, watch gameplay on youtube and fire up metacritic, and spend responsibly.
Finally, please use some of those savings to boost your Skyjacker pledge. We want to show up in Steam Sales to come!

SKYJACKER IN THE PRESS

RockPaperShotgun - When a straight shooter like John Walker is rooting for you, you’re doing something right. We’re going to keep the content coming, see if we can coax a few words out of Jim next...

RPS Roundup - A bit hard to find this week, but since they just gave us our OWN ARTICLE we have no complaints.

DiehardGameFan - Alexander Lucard (his real name!) caught wind of us before, but his personal tastes lean away from explosions and high-octane dogfights, more towards puzzles, adventures and digital novels. So we’re happily surprised to make it into his Kickstarter roundup alongside worthy projects like Haunts and Race to Adventure

GamersPress - If you’re curious about our press releases, it looks like they’ve reposted our latest one. Which is fine by us - the more SEO the better.

Persephone Magazine - "The development team is mostly Russian though; they are the only ones who keep making these types of game. Expect lots of sexism and macho dialogue. Especially in a world of pirates. Oh well, I can live with this… spaceship porn." Spaceship porn and machismo we won’t argue with, but the gender roles of the squids, bugs and lizards of the Galactic Society might surprise you. We know from sexual dimorphism. Besides, WHO says men get to have all the fun?

SFSignal - Skyjacker in... fandom? SF Signal took notice and we couldn’t be happier - with two Skyjacker novels out and a third in production, we absolutely intend to contribute to science fiction literature as well as space games. And with Eugene Zhukov as both the author of the books and the developer of the game, if crowdsourcing wins, he’ll be in a unique position to enforce complete editorial control over the process.

KICKING IT FORWARD

We haven’t forgotten about this! We just ran out of space games to promote. They’re out there, but most are weeks away from their target date; we’ll continue keeping tabs on these projects and bring them to your attention as they reach their final countdown.

Traveler - While this isn’t exactly in the same vein as the games we cherish, Traveller introduced hard science fiction to tabletop gaming 35 YEARS AGO when D&D was just getting off the ground. It’s been a staple of the scene ever since. Their Kickstarter for a new edition ends July 1st, and they’ve more than met their goal, but we’d be remiss in not spreading the word - if you like polyhedrons, pay them a visit.

@ Anton Hansen - yes, actually this is what we are planning to do in our multiplayer :))
The only point of discussion - should we keep the same level of detailed demolition there in multiplayer campaign? Everything depends on tests we'll do later, cause such feature as detailed demolition is very heavy by computer resources usage, and having choice between more players in level vs. more debris we reasonable will choose players :D

Freelance is actually one of my favorites in the genre, not because it's one of the greatest, considering a lot of the intended features was cut at the end, but because it had multiplayer. I played that game countless hours with my friends, playing out countless scenarios like trader bounty hunter, pirate....the list goes on.

It would be really great if Skyjacker could have similar multiplayer where you get to play in the same universe as the singleplayer campaign, but with the main quest line turned off.